The First Edition of the Most Famous Herbal Ever Printed, Illuminated by Hubert Cailleau, Court Painter to Mary of Hungary
FUCHS, Leonhart. De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, maximis impensis et vigiliis elaborati […]. Basel, Michael Isengrin, 1542.
One of the greatest monuments in the history of science, medicine, and book illustration: the first edition of Leonhart Fuchs’ celebrated herbal, universally regarded as the most beautiful and influential botanical book of the Renaissance, preserved here in what is very possibly the finest surviving copy, illuminated throughout in 1552 by Hubert Cailleau, court painter to Queen Mary of Hungary.
Few printed books unite scientific ambition, artistic perfection, and bibliophilic splendour at such a level. Fuchs’ herbal transformed the study of plants from inherited textual authority into direct visual observation of nature itself. At the same time, its extraordinary woodcuts established a new standard for botanical illustration that remained unsurpassed for centuries. The present copy elevates the achievement even further through one of the most refined sixteenth-century colourings known in any scientific book.
Edition & Physical Description
Large folio (approximately 355 × 233 mm).
The volume comprises 14 preliminary leaves, 896 pages, and two final leaves, printed with narrow marginal columns and extensive indices. It is illustrated with a woodcut printer’s device on the title and final leaf, a full-page portrait of Leonhart Fuchs on the verso of the title, three portraits of the artists responsible for the illustrations near the conclusion of the volume, and 512 botanical woodcuts, of which 508 are full-page. All illustrations are coloured throughout.
Particularly remarkable is the large drawn and watercoloured cartouche on the verso of the penultimate leaf, signed and dated 1552 by the illuminator Hubert Cailleau. The book survives in a modern wooden-board binding covered in green velvet with brass cornerpieces and clasps, preserved in a green half-morocco case lined with felt.
Despite a handful of careful restorations to the title and several leaves, the copy remains extraordinarily large, fresh, and visually overwhelming in its effect.
Leonhart Fuchs and the Reinvention of Botany
Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566), born in Wemding, was regarded already in youth as a prodigy. By the age of twelve he had begun studying philosophy and natural science in Erfurt, later becoming a student of Johannes Reuchlin in Ingolstadt before obtaining his medical doctorate in 1524. A committed Lutheran, he entered the service of Georg the Pious of Brandenburg-Ansbach as court physician before Duke Ulrich of Württemberg brought him to the University of Tübingen in 1535. There Fuchs established not only his academic career but also an extensive medicinal garden that provided many of the living models for the present work.
The resulting herbal of 1542 immediately eclipsed all predecessors.
Fuchs described approximately 400 native European plants and 100 foreign species, more than doubling the range of earlier herbals such as Otto Brunfels. Around forty species were described here for the first time, including numerous plants newly arrived from the Americas. Unlike medieval herbals still dependent on inherited textual tradition, astrology, symbolism, and superstition, Fuchs turned directly toward classical Greek sources and empirical observation of nature itself.
The work therefore occupies a crucial position in the intellectual transition from medieval medicine toward Renaissance scientific observation. Although the text remains strongly connected to pharmaceutical and medicinal applications, the illustrations reveal a fundamentally new way of seeing plants: not merely as ingredients for remedies, but as living organisms worthy of study in themselves.
The Woodcuts
The enduring fame of the book rests above all on its illustrations.
The plant portraits were created principally by the artist Albrecht Meyer, transferred onto the woodblocks by Heinrich Füllmaurer, and cut by the Strasbourg formschneider Veit Rudolph Speckle. Their achievement was revolutionary. Plants are depicted not schematically or symbolically, but as complete living organisms with roots, stems, leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruit shown simultaneously in idealized yet botanically exact form.
Fuchs himself exercised unusually close supervision over the illustrations, insisting that only healthy and fully developed specimens be represented. Yet the artists retained considerable freedom to pursue visual beauty alongside scientific precision. The resulting images achieve a remarkable balance between empirical observation and Renaissance idealization. As Wilfrid Blunt famously observed, Fuchs’ artists treated plants rather as Greek sculptors treated the human head: nature perfected through art.
The clarity of the illustrations was further enhanced by Veit Speckle’s decision to cut the images largely in outline without dense shading or hatching. Fuchs explained this choice as an attempt to ensure that no shadow would obscure botanical clarity, though the technique also strongly suggests that the blocks were intended from the outset to receive hand colouring.
The influence of these images became immense. For centuries they established the visual standard for botanical illustration, and their authority remained visible well into modern scientific publishing.
Hubert Cailleau and the Illumination of the Present Copy
Even among surviving copies of Fuchs, the present example occupies an exceptional position.
Every woodcut has been illuminated by Hubert Cailleau of Valenciennes, court painter to Mary of Hungary, sister of Emperor Charles V and governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Cailleau signed and dated his work in a magnificent painted cartouche executed in 1552. The original recipient’s name, once written within the cartouche beneath the protection of a winged female figure of Memory, was later carefully erased, though the initials “H” and “P” remain faintly visible.
The exact patron remains unknown, though the evidence strongly suggests a recipient from the immediate circle of Queen Mary herself.
Cailleau’s experience as an illuminator of luxurious liturgical manuscripts proved uniquely suited to the present task. Rather than treating the plants as decorative accessories, he approached them as independent living subjects. His colouring surpasses ordinary contemporary botanical colouring by an extraordinary margin. Through subtle layering, tonal variation, mixed pigments, and exceptionally delicate modelling, he achieved astonishing naturalism in leaves, roots, blossoms, stems, and fruit. He additionally supplied French plant names in elegant calligraphy beside the printed Latin and German nomenclature.
The result approaches miniature painting rather than ordinary hand-colouring.
Heribert Tenschert compares the present copy directly with the famous Jacques-Auguste de Thou copy offered in New York in 2012 for $950,000, concluding unequivocally that the colouring here is superior: more varied, more intense, more botanically nuanced, and more visually alive. Even more revealing is the comparison with Leonhart Fuchs’ own coloured copy of the German edition of 1543, now in Ulm and recently reproduced in facsimile by Taschen. Despite having been supervised personally by Fuchs himself, that copy appears markedly less refined, less complete, and less luminous than the present Cailleau illumination.
It is therefore difficult to dispute Tenschert’s suggestion that this may indeed be the most beautiful surviving copy of Fuchs’ herbal.
The Artists Portrayed
The self-awareness of the project is remarkable throughout.
On the verso of the title, Leonhart Fuchs himself appears in a magnificent full-page portrait. Near the conclusion of the volume, the three artists responsible for the illustrations are likewise honoured with portraits of unprecedented prominence: Albrecht Meyer drawing a flower placed before him in a vase, Heinrich Füllmaurer transferring the design onto the woodblock, and Veit Rudolph Speckle cutting the block itself.
This is among the earliest printed books ever to celebrate illustrators themselves as creative collaborators worthy of commemoration alongside the author.
Provenance
The painted cartouche signed by Hubert Cailleau records the illumination of the volume in 1552 for an unidentified owner whose partially erased initials appear to begin with “H” and “P.” The copy later entered a Liechtenstein private collection.
Literature
Adams F 1099; Arber 64ff.; Blunt 48ff.; Brunet II, 1415; Davies, Fairfax Murray German 175; Dibner 19; Durling 1675; Ebert 7983; Fünf Jahrhunderte 87; Garrison/Morton 1808; Graesse II, 642; Heilmann 205ff.; Horblit 33b; Hunt 48; Lonchamp, Suisse 1117; Meyer IV, 312f.; NDB 5, 681f.; Nissen, BBI I, 44ff. and no. 658; PMM 69; Pritzel 3138; Sparrow 72; Stillwell III, 372 = IV, 640; Stübler 234ff. and no. 37; VD16 F 3242. For Hubert Cailleau see Thieme/Becker 5, 360f.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 49:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
